Limits of mobility justice? An empirical study of Berlin’s street-space redesigns and their participatory processes

For nearly a century, car-centred transport planning has shaped urban mobility and infrastructure, contributing to environmental and social challenges. In response, cities worldwide are implementing street-space redesigns to promote an ecologically and socially just transformation of the transport sector. However, framing the measure of redesigns as inherently sustainable and beneficial oversimplifies a complex process of just mobility transitions. The mobility sector, as it is shaped today, is deeply intertwined with various mobility injustices and changes to it also risk (re)producing them. Moreover, the normative goal of mobility justice is multifaceted and spans different spatial and temporal scales. Reducing it to a question of spatial distribution overlooks the injustices, often becoming apparent in conflicts in and concerning the planning process. While many researchers and practitioners can subscribe to the abstract idea of a just mobility transition, yet in practical terms there is disagreement on what this involves and how it is best achieved. In three different studies with alternating foci, this study explores the extent to which the planning instrument of redesigns for the transport and mobility transition and especially their participatory processes (re)produce dimensions of mobility injustices. Sheller’s mobility justice framework and different explanatory approaches to political participation are used as a theoretical framework. To better investigate these complex interrelationships of the normative goal and the practical implications, a qualitative, case-study-driven research approach was adopted, combining narrative and problem-centred interviews as well as focus groups. Empirically, the study uses three street-space redesigns in Berlin. The results indicate that the redesigns of urban street spaces contribute to the (re)production of distributive, procedural, and recognition-based mobility injustices. For example, distributive injustices persist when redesigns fail to improve accessibility and remain highly location specific. The most significant reproduction of injustices, however, occurs within the participatory process, where state actors invite the civil society to participate in the planning process of the redesign. In the case studies, these invited spaces appeared as exclusionary rooms where not all voices and especially those of structurally disadvantaged were not represented, heard and trusted. This in turn raised recognition-based and epistemic injustice. However, recognising and acknowledging the lived expertise of those particularly affected of mobility and societal injustices is central to mobility justice. Rather than truly opening up the discourse, the investigated invited spaces reinforced exclusion and silencing. The results of these exclusionary planning processes undermine even more the potential of society-centric planning approaches to enhance mobility justice. By bringing the normative mobility justice lens to the analysis of planning instruments of the transport and mobility transition, this study not only brings to the fore the (re)production of mobility injustices through street-space redesigns but also sheds light on how especially their participatory planning approach could be improved for a truly just mobility transition.